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Fake cop admits role in fake kidnapping

A young Winnipeg man has admitted to posing as a police officer while staging the supposed kidnapping of a teenage friend.

Harpreet Singh Kanda, 22, pleaded guilty Monday to impersonating a police officer, uttering threats and conveying a message with intent to alarm in connection with the bizarre January 2014 incident.

Kanda's trial was set to resume Monday after a four-month layoff. Kidnapping and firearm related offences have been stayed by the Crown.

Kanda will return to court for sentencing on Jan. 30. He remains free on bail.

Kanda had been holding himself out as a police officer for several months when he told the 14-year-old male victim he was to be questioned in connection to a crime and lodged him in a downtown hotel room.

Kanda was already in custody when — nearly 12 hours after the boy had been reported kidnapped — police received word he had called his parents from the hotel, court heard at trial last June.

When police arrived at the hotel 20 minutes later, the boy was standing in the lobby "looking a little bit lost and aimless," Det. Const. Duncan Paterson testified.

Paterson said when he and his partner showed the boy their badges, he asked "Where's Harpreet? Isn't he a cop?"

The previous evening, the boy's parents received a ransom note claiming to be from the "Russian Mafia" and demanding the equivalent of $500,000 for his safe return.

Police met with anxious family members at an Elmwood home where Kanda, a family friend, was also present.

"It was a quite tense situation," Const. Robert Zurstegge testified. "There were some females crying. Obviously there was some concern as to what happened."

One of the boy's aunts told police she overheard him on the phone with Kanda, discussing plans to meet earlier that day to play video games, Zurstegge said.

Zurstegge and partner Const. Steve Prociuk left the house for a time and when they returned were advised by another officer to arrest Kanda for impersonating a police officer.

"We were instructed that there had been a ruse, that essentially he had been a police officer and that the family and the community had been under the impression he had been training to be a police officer," Prociuk said.

Police later seized a bag from the hotel room containing a replica handgun and badge and forged police documents suggesting Kanda had been hired as a "special officer" for an international assignment.